Tektontv ( subscribe and hit the bell: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpllN9azBqdDQZUKTkG_SwA ) gives the context behind one of the most infamous caricatured bible verses that is used as an argument by bible-bashers who don't really put much thought into this stuff.

It's one of those common fundie-Atheist arguments that you can look into for like a minute and go "Wtf kind of 'gotcha' is this?". A skeptic friend of mine (not a fundie-Atheist) was curious as to the context of this verse but this is also generally for those who make this stupid argument as...well, a 'gotcha'. Not only do most translations have the "he could not stop them" as "they (as in the tribe of Judah) could not stop them", but I have to ask in what context would it make sense for the biblical authors to portray their God as showing such shameful weakness? Not to mention you'd be hard-pressed to find a single bible scholar who buys the interpretation that a bunch of iron chariots would be too much for any deity...no matter how minor.

The very idea that the same God that created the universe, that defeated the chaos dragon Leviathan, and parted the Sea of Reeds (following the single-handed defeat of the Egyptian gods which caused the plagues...whether historical or not), would be thwarted by Man's tools is beyond asinine. Also since not much later in the text, the Israelites do overcome Iron chariots. The only rational explanation is that the Israelites had not yet developed iron technology at that time (given the background, that is the case). The warriors of the tribe of Judah would be no exception. Had they been faithful to Yahveh, they would have won without the need for iron, which other Israelites achieved later. Because they lacked faith and/or sinned, Judah was left to their own strength and their iron-clad enemies kicked their asses. Whereas the faithful succeeded in overcoming iron chariots in Judges 4:13-16.

The Book of Judges is set between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, and was partially a counter-narrative to the Book of Joshua. As the Book of Joshua was a compression of loosely connected events (the ransacking of Canaanite cities by the Habiru, the collapse of the Bronze Age, etc.) into a single epic story in which Canaan was conquered on one swift invasion, the Book of Judges chronicles the conquest of Canaan as a long, gradual process of on-and-off times of war and peace within a 300-year span from the time they entered the Holy Land up until the time of Samuel, Saul, and David (from the time of David onward, Israelite and Jewish history is fairly good, whereas previous history is rather distorted, fragmented, and compressed, as was the case with the Book of Joshua and the Tower of Babel narrative).

Since Canaan was under Egyptian jurisdiction throughout most of the New Kingdom period in Egyptian history, the period of the Judges would have been an expansion of what really happened between the collapse of the Bronze Age (when Egypt lost its grip on the Holy Land and when the great civilizations temporarily fell, also when Troy and Ugarit were destroyed -- celebrity archaeologist Eric Cline goes over the backdrop of the Bronze Age collapse in his lecture in Bethesda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpJwuRyopg8 ), and the call of Samuel.

If I didn't have so much time on my hands with work and my book, I'd be tempted to do a comic book illustrating bible-bashers' caricatures of the bible, exactly how they present them, just to show how mind-numbingly silly they're biblical eisegesis are. One of the funniest (yet tragic) misrepresentations is the "forcing a girl to marry her rapist" apologetic...which was already covered in a another vid on this channel. I mean DarkMatter2525 aka FecalMatter2525 does them with his shitty cartoons (which are known to destroy brain cells) but he actually takes these caricatures seriously and often adds his own opinions on them near the end. And when you attempt to correct him on anything, he literally acts like a typical village-Atheist who cannot - will not - be reasoned with. Ah well. Those who come in good faith are often the ones who know better.